Superhero Predictive Text: What Google Thinks About Comics

There’s a lot of fun to be had with Google predictive text, where you start typing something into the Google search bar, and it tries to guess the full phrase the searches of millions of other people. Now, this can be very helpful when you’re typing in a very common phrase like, say, the old Spider-Man axiom “With great power comes great responsibility.”

You only need to type “with great” to pull it up as an option, AND you also learn the fun fact that a lot of people think this pearl of wisdom came from Thomas Jefferson rather than Stan Lee. (Type out “with great power comes” and you get people thinking it came from FDR or the Bible.)

But where it gets really fun is when you start typing in open-ended phrases that would usually end with opinions, like “I love” or “I hate” or “X is…” Typing in “Marvel is” predicts “Marvel is better than DC,” while conversely, “DC is” predicts “DC is better than Marvel.” What happens with you try this with “comics” itself? Preeeetty much a digital window into the comics ghetto.

While we get an obligatory “comics are good,”most people on Google seem to think comics are dead, comics are worthless, comics are not literature, and worst of all, comics are for kids. Jeez, google users, have you not read a single comic book article headline in the last decade?

On a lighter note, it’s pretty entertaining to just sit there typing in the names of various superheroes. As you might expect, you get a lot of name-calling: Cyclops is a douche, Superman is a dick, Professor X is a jerk, etc. Also, it would seem that people have been either reading too many issues of “Marvel Zombies,” or believe that Peter Parker would be a very hospitable host:

Rogues' Gallery

Welcome back to ComicsAlliance

It appears that you already have an account created within our VIP network of sites on .
To keep your personal information safe, we need to verify that it's really you.
To activate your account, please confirm your password.
When you have confirmed your password, you will be able to log in through Facebook on both sites.

Welcome back to ComicsAlliance

It appears that you already have an account on this site associated with . To connect your existing account just click on the account activation button below. You will maintain your existing VIP profile. After you do this, you will be able to always log in to http://comicsalliance.com using your original account information.